


affection (i tell you i love you again and again)

by offbrandgizmo



Category: The Tarot Sequence - K.D. Edwards
Genre: 5+1 Things, Affection, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gen, Gratuitous Love, I'm making that a tag bc it applies, M/M, Mild Smut, More fluff than angst, Nightmares, Relationship Study, for a lot of relationships, that is literally the title of this fic, why is everything i write a study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:53:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23171992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/offbrandgizmo/pseuds/offbrandgizmo
Summary: He had stared into those eyes long enough, and so many endless times, to pry apart the difference between trick of the light and devotion.(or: five times people gave Rune affection, and the times he gave it back)
Relationships: Matthias Saint Valentine & Quinn Saint Nicholas, Rune Saint John & Anton Saint Joshua, Rune Saint John & Brandon Saint John, Rune Saint John & Matthias Saint Valentine, Rune Saint John & Quinn Saint Nicholas, Rune Saint John/Addam Saint Nicholas, Rune Saint John/Geoffrey Saint Talbot, past - Relationship
Comments: 7
Kudos: 36





	affection (i tell you i love you again and again)

**Author's Note:**

> cw: mention of scars resulting from scratching, nightmares resulting from past abuse (not detailed), allusions to and slight description of sex
> 
> written partly with the vibes of Affection by Amber Run in mind  
> want a gorgeous version of that song i had on repeat for the max/quinn bit? go [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpkcYbIeqE4)

**one: _fall down to sleep_**

He remembered, later, their time together as mostly hurried. Rushed, breathless kisses and fevered touches laced with shame. Some kind of strength, affected or genuine, covering it up and covering him, all-encompassing and somehow appropriately irrelevant for both of them. Just: the touch of another. No vow on the horizon except some loose promise of a promise buried beneath a forever neither of them ever cared to believe in. (But maybe, he mused from time to time, a little bit longer than a wordless rupture could have been nice.)

  
Then, wrapped up in arms on a cheap hotel-room bed, a lingering intelligence imprinted into his skin, kissed into his temple and torn back out again in hushed moans and sighs and _yes_ and _please._ The pleasure of mutual discovery, and then, of an amusement not yet convoluted in that way adults become. Fireworks, muted explosions right above their heads, the heat of sparks just shy of their skin—he was all _lights,_ coloured and scattered along his hairline, creating kaleidoscope shards in his glasses.

  
And warmth kissed, then, by petals red, and orange, and pink, and yellow. A snowfall-dusted kiss into his hair, falling like dander from Geoffrey’s lips as he pulled back.

  
_Geoffrey._

  
Geoffrey, who left behind a sense of urgency that stuck with Rune for years, who took so long to shake off, even when, as he later learned, his abandonment hadn’t gone unpunished.

  
With Geoffrey moments felt bordered, contained within themselves. But in those moments a heat raced along the surface of Rune’s skin like lightening strike needle-points that made him exhale in stutters. In those moments, Geoffrey’s attention was a fire different to the sun’s but wholly just as warm in different ways.

* * *

**two: _into a fever dream_**

  
He knew what his Companion was never going to say. Certain things were off-limits between them because they could be damaging—certain things weren’t to be touched because the protective foundations, however strongly guarded, were thinly-veiled at best and liable to crumble with a push, or a tug, or an off-kilter word.

  
Nightmares were a careful foxtrot they’d partnered for on the nights that settled in uncertainty. Most of the time, Brand led, slow and careful and deliberate and practiced. Rune knew, even though Brand would never tell him, that in the immediate aftermath of the raid the fear from Rune’s nightmares became so strong that it’d wake him through their bond. Rune only ever heard the echoes of his hoarse screams, only saw afterimages of animal masks and Brand, in the corner, and then Brand again, not in the corner, and a crumbling _please don’t_ and—Brand, again, but Brand steady and solid and holding his shoulders in a vice grip Rune could only ever tolerate from him. Shaking him awake.

  
And crawling up onto the bed with him, wrapping Rune up in his arms, holding him _tight, tighter, please, Brand._ Burying his face in Rune’s hair, a ricocheting promise between them: he wouldn’t tell them Brand sobbed hard enough his eyes went red for days, with little lines from vessels worn too hard, and Brand wouldn’t tell them that Rune panicked so desperately he left cuts that healed to scars across Brand’s upper back. Like that, they fell to pieces together. And in the dead of consecutive nights in a hospital bed, they took the shattered parts between them and reconstructed them out of order so they’d never come apart, from each other, again. And eventually, Brand’s sobs turned to kisses in his hairline so slow and occasional they put everything into place, made everything calm down; if nothing ever went right again they’d be the rightest thing in one another’s world.

* * *

**three: _where i barely know what is going on_**

  
It was a single hand planted firmly on his head, the barest _hint_ of an affectionate ruffle, really just a shift of fingers slid on hair, probably only a twitch if he was honest—and it never happened again. But it was certainty enough to feel like the distant reflection of a kiss on his forehead, an encircling of arms around his not-yet-22 skin. And the man, walking away from him barefoot in silk pajamas, saying something about a job well done.

* * *

**four: _except i know that i want you_**

  
He never knew just how many different ways a set of happy eyes could make him feel, or just how many things they could show. Things like joy, and love, and honesty by choice. Things like—and the death of him it will definitely be—trust. How a child so much younger and so unfairly shaken by the world could set eyes on Rune and make him feel some lofty kind of safe would probably always be beyond him.

  
Maybe it was the smell in the air, or Queenie, because both of those things were home. But she was adamant, later, that neither Max nor Quinn had needed any help from her, and that she was only around to taste test, because Max was terrified of giving Rune cookies that didn’t taste good in spite of Quinn’s insistent _he always likes them, every time, except the time Brand replaced the chocolate chips with cacao nibs and Rune refused to eat his—oh, I won’t say that, that’s a bad word—bad i_ _mitation chocolate._

  
Maybe it was the taste, because they made three different kinds of cookies, and all of them were amazing, and Rune melted briefly into a sugar-induced state of bliss that felt like being with family.

  
Maybe it was watching Max and Quinn when they thought he wasn’t looking, seeing them fight over who got to tie the ribbon on the little plastic gift bag of banana oatmeal cookies they’d made for Brand until Max shoved Quinn into the counter and ran away with the ribbon. Quinn, retaliating by hiding the rest of the cookies in the cupboards and making Max think he’d eaten them all. Quinn, looking triumphant for all of the two seconds it took Max’s face to fall into dismay— _genuine dismay—_ and then he was pulling the trays back out of their hiding places and apologising profusely to a bashful-looking Max, offering him the rest of the chocolate chip cookies—which Max accepted.

  
Probably, though, it was Max coming up to him, later, his voice pitched into quiet the way it sometimes was around Rune. This kid, the kid he hadn’t wanted anything to do with not two years ago, whose lack of self-preservation and excess of well-meaning had scared the living shit out of him, holding out a plastic gift bag filled with chocolate chip cookies and telling him Quinn said Brand doesn’t usually find them if he hides them in the linen closet, underneath the extra sheets.

  
He’d floated in front of him an extra moment after Rune accepted the cookies, and didn’t leave until Rune ducked to meet his bright, young, paralyzingly hopeful eyes and told him he’d done a good job. He walked away red-faced, and Rune held his latest stash of sweets and felt a whirlpool in his chest, drowning him in good things and the earnest eyes of two teenagers, two of his favourite people in the world, and all he couldn’t wait to see them become. How much better he was going to make the world for them.

* * *

**five: _and i know that i need you_**

  
He had stared into those eyes long enough, and so many endless times, to pry apart the difference between trick of the light and devotion, and Addam had never been any kind of trick, or any kind of light. Addam was too solid to be fractal; too steady to be gossamer. He was a heavy press of lips to tilted jaw and exposed neck, hot and promise in the places threats used to mar. Down the curve of his spine, in the heady nervousness of trusting Addam behind him, in the moment the air become _stop,_ in the moment Addam stopped.

  
In the moment he recovered, flipped onto his back, invited Addam back in. In the moment Addam touched hand to chest and asked _is this okay?_ In the moment Rune stared into burgundy and closeness and said, _yes, please._ In the moment please became a litany, with Addam’s hands parallel along his hips, in the hollow space of Addam’s mouth, engulfed and whole for every second of it.

  
It was in closed-mouth kisses and his body covered by another, the skin-to-skin-to-honesty and lips-to-lips-to-trust, when Rune admitted he’d never known there was a space in his chest carved out for only Addam, for only this, for only _yes this is okay and yes I want this, because it is with you._ Addam’s quickening breath and hand on his cock, and whose hands were whose and whose skin was whose and whose eyes were whose—it didn’t matter. They were Rune and Addam, Addam and Rune, no matter which way things were shaken, no matter which way things were held.

  
A keen drowned in a shout drowned in a cry and they were coming, together, hard and hardly separate, and they were pressed together so long afterwards that Rune wasn’t sure he hadn’t truly melted into Addam’s skin. And somehow, in all the big and all the significant of it, none of it felt too much. It was so profusely and enormously enough that Rune considered it one of the most important moments he would ever have in his lifetime, be it decades more or centuries. The weight of Addam was the weight of the possibility an inevitably better future would bring. And then, at once, it wasn’t anymore. The weight of Addam was just Addam, and that was enough.

* * *

**and:** _**i tell you i love you again and again and again and again** _

  
In tangled limbs and a sigh that made his chest rise, then fall, then steady, he said, ‘I love you.’ Brand hit him with a pillow and told him not to be sappy, then buried his face in Rune’s hair the way he used to, breathing deeply and sighing a kiss into his temple. Rune dug the flats of his fingers into Brand’s upper back and smiled into the skin of his best friend.

  
A trio of adults standing before their two most irritating, trouble-magnet teenagers, sheepish looks in plaster on their faces: ‘We love you,’ he told them, looking between Max, who was meeting his eyes like he couldn’t look away, and Quinn, who was holding a handkerchief to his still-bleeding nose. ‘We don’t want you to get hurt.’ He’d leave the bad-cop act to Brand.

  
‘I love you,’ he told Addam. Addam, perched on the kitchen counter with ice-cream on his nose, spoon and tub in hand, hair a loose mess around him, eyes bleary and unfocused. A noncommittal hum, a question, a blink, and Rune’s tongue darting out to lick the boysenberry from his nose. A contented sigh from a man on the other side of a week with far too little sleep. Rune cupped his face and pulled him into a long kiss, taking him to bed, ice-cream abandoned on the counter. This time Brand couldn’t wake him when he slept past 3pm, because a tired boyfriend was a pretty good excuse.

  
‘Thank you,’ he said. Two words, terse, but blunt in comparison to anything that his sometimes-employer could ever throw back at him. He didn’t want anything, though. He had the memory of a hand showing a rarity in kindness and two decades worth of proof of trust. That was more than enough, from him. But the long, unblinking stare and dismissal was an affirmation of understanding. It was all there was and all there needed to be.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading it is 1:23 in the morning and i love you and am tired  
> hope you liked at least a little of this whacky, prose-heavy brainchild


End file.
